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Dr. Anthony Fauci Received Moderna Vaccine Today; Joe Biden to Give Speech Today; Interview with Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI). Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired December 22, 2020 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN REPORTER: Meanwhile, while all of this political back-and-forth goes on, there are people caught in the middle. Most of these drivers don't think they'll make it home for Christmas, and there are good caught in the middle. This is a vital supply line for the U.K., and this country could be looking at food shortages, medicine shortages empty grocery stores during Christmastime -- Bianna.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Salma Abdelaziz, our thanks to you.

And that's it for me; NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right now.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Bianna, thank you so much.

Hi there, I'm Brooke Baldwin, you're watching CNN. Thank you for being with me.

In just moments, President-elect Joe Biden will be giving this year- end speech. He is expected to take questions, and we will bring that to you live. But his message in recent days to Americans who are so weary and worn out from this pandemic is that help is on the way, help both in economic stimulus and two effective vaccines.

Today, the nation's top crusader in the fight against the pandemic -- here he is -- Dr. Anthony Fauci, rolling up his sleeve to get the shot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I feel extreme confidence in the safety and the efficacy of this vaccine, and I want to encourage everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated so that we could have a veil of protection over this country that would end this pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: And while the vaccine is making its way to health care workers, they're also overworked and dealing with record numbers of patients. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD SPELLBERG, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, L.A. USC MEDICAL CENTER: We're exhausted, we're frustrated and we need the public to really respect public health guidelines.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: This is all happening as public health officials are trying to quiet fears about this virus variant that has emerged in the U.K. BioNTech's CEO says that they are, quote, "Confident that Pfizer's vaccine will protect against this mutation." And today, the White House is considering whether to require travelers from the U.K. to show proof of a negative COVID test, but Dr. Fauci says the coronavirus variant may already be here in the U.S.

Either way, this country will go into the Christmas holiday with more than 18 million cases since this whole thing began, and look with me at how quickly we got here, it is truly astounding. The first 9 million cases took 284 days to reach; the second 9 million, 52.

CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen is here. And, Elizabeth, let's start with this variant in the U.K. How are scientists saying that this should be handled?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Let's take a look at some of the basics of this because this is so new. So this variant, as you mentioned, Brooke, first showed up in the U.K. They've traced it back to September 20th near London.

Now, the U.K. scientists are telling us that they are highly confident it is more transmissible. Yesterday, they weren't quite as confident, now they're using the term "highly confident." They are saying that six out of 10 cases are this new variant, so six out of 10 cases are this variant, not previous ones.

And this is interesting, most of the cases are in people under age 60. The reason why that's a concern is that when people are asymptomatic, they usually are under age 60. So that may be why this is spreading so quickly, or part of the reason is that many of these people aren't showing symptoms so they're running around and spreading it.

So what this means for the vaccine is that we're being told officially, look, this isn't going to pose a problem most likely for the vaccine, but there's enough of a question mark that Moderna and Pfizer are testing it out, they're going to see, does their vaccine work against this new variant?

And they do that by looking at computer models, and if the computer models show that there are some problems, then they go into the lab and then maybe they go work with animals and they try to see, does -- is this vaccine going to work against this new variant. The thinking is that it will, but there are some concerns that it might not, enough that they're testing it out -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: I want to ask you, too, just about, you know, we all have our masks and you're following this new study about the effectiveness in mask-wearing. What did you find?

COHEN: So we should be wearing the masks, that's the first thing that the study found, is that masks do work. What these folks did -- and these were physicists, very interesting study -- is they made a machine basically that coughs and sneezes like a human, and then they put various kinds of masks on it: cloth masks, surgical masks, N95.

And they found that for basically everything except the N95, some things did get through but it did work. In other words, it helped but some things did get through. So the moral of the story is you can't just wear masks alone. They're going to help, but to make it work really, really optimally well what you want to do is social distance as well. Those two things need to go hand-in-hand, it is not enough to just wear a mask, you also need to keep yourself as far away from people as you can, at least six feet -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Listening to every word of yours, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you very much for all of that.

With me now, Dr. Rob Davidson. He is an emergency room physician and executive director for the Committee to Protect Medicare.

[14:05:06]

So, Dr. Davidson, good to see you, welcome back.

ROB DAVIDSON, WEST MICHIGAN EMERGENCY ROOM PHYSICIAN: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: You know, I -- we've all been thinking about frontline workers like you, you know, battling this post-Thanksgiving surge and now we're about to see another surge, you know, after Christmas. Tell me, just how is your ICU preparing for that? And also your hospital staff. You know, are non-critical care folks getting trained up?

DAVIDSON: Yes, we're training across our hospital and really, we're part of a larger hospital system across West Michigan, and so we're all preparing. You know, some places get full at one point, another place has availability, therefore our EMS crews are ready to go.

You know, we were dealing with this over the last, really, four to six weeks, seeing a slight lull -- at least not increasing numbers of cases, but it's sort of leveling off. The concern is now Christmas is coming, and then New Year's and we are expecting another surge, as we saw just before and just after Thanksgiving.

And so, yes, we're ready in all different areas of the hospital to be taking care of these more critically ill patients.

BALDWIN: What about you and vaccines? I know you and I chatted about this last week, you were waiting on the Moderna vaccine because your hospital doesn't have the deep-freeze freezers for the Pfizer vaccine. What's the update?

DAVIDSON: Correct, I am scheduled for Sunday at 1:00 p.m. between night shifts, and then my second dose scheduled for January 24th, four weeks later, at 1:00 p.m. So -- BALDWIN: Good, good.

DAVIDSON: -- really looking forward to that, and, you know, excited to see Dr. Fauci getting his first doze today and I think, again, this is the beginning of hope and of the end of all this.

BALDWIN: Watching him, it was like he couldn't get his sleeve up, you know, fast enough so he could get this first dose.

Elizabeth and I were just talking about this new mask-wearing, this study showing that mask-wearing alone, you know, without social distancing may not be able to fully prevent COVID from spreading. What's your takeaway from that and how will the vaccine affect mask- wearing and social distancing?

DAVIDSON: Yes, I think this is a challenge with public health and with health care. It comes up for me when I see people, you know, who have certain risk behaviors like smoking, and you try to explain to them, this increases their risk of certain diseases, and they tell you about their grandmother who lived to be 90 and smoked every day.

You say, well, yes, of course. You know, we're talking about risk. And so masks definitely decrease the spread of the virus. Just having a mask doesn't eliminate it. If we could get everybody an N95, it would decrease it pretty close to zero, but certainly not there.

Just distancing doesn't do it. Frankly, just having a vaccine isn't going to do it, it's all of this. Once I get my second dose of vaccine, guess what? I'm still wearing my mask at work, I'm still wearing masks when I go out, you know, to go grocery shopping. We still have to do this for quite a long time so we can be sure that the vaccines are working and we can truly drive down those numbers.

BALDWIN: We have to keep doing it -- correct me, it's sort of like 70, 75 percent of the population, that's when we ultimately get herd immunity? I'm so glad you bring that up because we keep seeing folks like Dr. Fauci and then you, you know, still wearing the mask after the first dose.

Just how -- not to sound impatient, you know, Dr. Davidson, but how much longer until we hit that herd immunity if everyone's getting vaccinated?

DAVIDSON: I mean, the honest answer is we don't know. But I think the solution to that question is going to be a continued study of people in the original trials, and then studying people -- studying the whole population as more and more people get vaccinated.

We know through phase three trials that at three months, 95 percent effective. We will soon know at four months, five months, six months, and going out to a year. We may find that people have significant protection for six to nine months, and then it starts to wane and maybe people need a booster at, you know, every year for a little while to truly eradicate this. Maybe new strains require that the vaccine be updated, similar to what happens with the flu every year, too. So I just think we have to be somewhat patient and the folks in health

care and public health need to continue to communicate with one voice. I think having President Biden in place in January will help that as well because I think you're right, people are impatient, we're ready to be done with it.

BALDWIN: Yes, I'm just asking the thing that I know a lot of people sitting there watching are wondering themselves. Dr. Rob Davidson, thank you very much, happy holidays if we don't talk and good luck rolling up the sleeve.

DAVIDSON: Thank you.

BALDWIN: We'll talk on the other side of the holiday.

President-elect Joe Biden is about to speak from Wilmington, Delaware, ahead of the Christmas holiday. And I have CNN political analyst Lisa Lerer with me to talk about what we may hear from the president-elect. She is also a national political reporter for "The New York Times.

So, Lisa, welcome, welcome. What are you expecting to hear from the speech?

LISA LERER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think one thing we're going to hear is the announcement potentially of his new education (INAUDIBLE). It's a slightly lower profile pick, he'll be the first Latino in the position, which is something that many Latinos in Washington wanted to see, they wanted more representation.

This is not an easy job. Biden, of course, has promised to reopen schools in the first hundred days, that's going to be tough and many school districts' parents remain divided on whether to reopen schools, union officials remain divided over whether to reopen schools on that timeline.

[14:10:00]

And Miguel Cardona, the man who's Biden's selection for this job, is someone who is endorsed -- who's navigated those cross currents very well in his home state of Connecticut, where he is head of the school system. He was endorsed by all the unions in that state, which is something that really carried a lot of weight with the Biden team, to throw their energy behind this lower-profile pick.

TEXT: Miguel Cardona, Secretary of Education: Connecticut education commissioner; Leading proponent of getting kids back in school; Former principal and elementary school teacher; Endorsed by Congressional Hispanic Caucus

LERER: He's someone who is an assistant superintendent in Connecticut as recently as two years ago. So compared to some of the other big names that were floated for this post, he's someone that really fulfills a campaign promise of Joe Biden's, which was to pick an educator.

BALDWIN: All right. So Miguel Cardona. Beyond secretary of Ed, we know that there are five major openings left in the Biden administration, including attorney general, also Labor and Commerce secretaries. The Biden team had originally said, you know, they wanted to get all those nominees in place or at least announced by Christmas. There are two frontrunners for Biden's A.G. pick. Lisa, how just monumental is that particular decision going to be?

LERER: Oh, it's a huge decision. It is of course one of the highest- profile positions in the cabinet. The leading frontrunners are Doug Jones, who is the former senator from Alabama, he lost his re- election; and Merrick Garland, who of course was Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, who was refused to be -- even get a confirmation hearing by the Republican Senate.

Those -- both those contenders are white men, and there's a contingent in the Democratic Party that feels pretty strongly that that post needs to go to someone who's black, given the voting issues, the criminal justice issues that the attorney general will play such a big role in over the next four years.

So that's definitely a really frontline fight in these intra- Democratic Party wars over these positions. And it's a job that everyone in the party is really watching very, very closely.

BALDWIN: Another openings that's being talked about is Senator Kamala Harris' California Senate seat. Governor Newsom just announced that he is appointing the California secretary of state, Alex Padilla. How do you expect that choice to go over with Democrats?

LERER: This is another historic pick. This is someone who will be the first Latino senator from the state with the highest Latino population in the country, but it's also going to be disappointing for some pieces of the Democratic coalition, who wanted to see the second black woman in the Senate replaced by another black woman.

The complicating factor with that kind of a choice is that the leading black female contenders for that job are all currently members of the House, and there was some concern from Nancy Pelosi, from Democratic leadership, from some in the incoming Biden administration about further potentially eroding their margin in the House and having more open seats there, given, when they look down the line to the 2022 elections, which could be pretty tough. And Democrats are likely to enter that election without as wide a cushion in terms of their House majority as many in the party would like.

BALDWIN: Thank you for looking ahead to these picks, potential picks, and we'll be watching for the president-elect to speak, and he is expected to take questions. Lisa Lerer, thank you for now.

In the meantime, high anxiety over at the Pentagon as officers wait and worry about President Trump's next unpredictable moves.

Plus, targeting the Treasury Department, new details in that suspected Russian hack of government agencies.

And despite a clear warning from the CDC, Americans are traveling for the holidays, big time. [14:13:25]

We'll discuss all of that, next. You're watching CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin.

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BALDWIN: We are back, you're watching CNN, I'm Brooke Baldwin, thank you for being with me.

President Trump's final days in office have triggered growing anxiety at the Pentagon's top levels, where there is uncertainty over what this president could do in his remaining 29 days in office. It has gotten to the point that some senior military officers are even trying to steer clear of the White House rather than risk being in Trump's orbit.

CNN Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr is the one breaking this story. And, Barbara, you're talking to those both in and outside the Pentagon, and one officer was saying to you that senior officials just don't even know what this president might do. What else are they saying?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: You know, well, that's the general tone that we're hearing from so many places right now.

Look, the most important thing to say right off the top, any orders from any president of the United States have to be legal or the military simply doesn't follow them. They don't follow illegal orders. So there's a lot of talk out there, but keep in mind it has to be legal.

And that in and of itself is a concern, because now, in recent days, you have President Trump meeting with people in the Oval Office who are very much on his train of thought about trying to overturn the election: Retired Lieutenant General Mike Flynn, fired National Security adviser, he's now openly talking about martial law being essentially, for all purposes, no big deal, talking about using military capabilities to overturn elections in -- or to change election outcomes in swing states.

The military has been adamant, it has no role in elections, no role in election outcomes. One retired general, Tony Thomas, former head of Special Operations, who, in and of himself, is very influential in that community, had a tweet that caught our attention.

And General Thomas said -- I want to read it to everybody -- aimed at General Flynn -- and I quote -- "Mike, stop. Just stop. You are a former soldier. You know that leveraging the military to 'rerun elections' is a totally inappropriate role for the profession You are also undercutting the extraordinary trust and confidence America has in their military. Stop!"

That's a message from a respected retired four-star to another retired three-star, who's been advocating the use, the potential use of military capability in rerunning elections in swing states. That's where we are, some 30 days or so -- or less -- before the president- elect is sworn in -- Brooke.

[14:20:11]

BALDWIN: Those words, "Stop. Just stop," he says. Barbara Starr, thank you, Barbara, for your reporting.

With me now, Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, she is a former CIA analyst, she was a senior Defense Department official in the Obama administration, she's currently on the Armed Services and Homeland Security Committees.

So Congresswoman Slotkin, always great to have you on, welcome. You just heard Barbara's reporting, you know, about the top military brass anxious about these next couple of weeks under this Trump administration. You know, they don't know, quote-unquote, "What he might do," some are making lists of the things that he could do.

As someone who has worked high up at DOD, what would be your top concern?

REP. ELISSA SLOTKIN (D-MI): Well, frankly, I think most importantly is everyone at the Pentagon, you know, follows sort of a chain-of- command style of leadership, they're looking to the senior ranks of the Pentagon to see what they're going to say and how they're going to react.

And I've been heartened by the statements by the secretary of the Army that they put out, like there's no role for the military in the transition, in redoing the elections, none of it. And General Milley has been -- the chairman of the Joint Chiefs -- has been clear about this for months now.

I think we need to keep hearing those messages because otherwise, if you just leave it hanging out there, I mean, the president is the commander-in-chief, he's having these conversations. I understand the anxiety and leadership climate needs to be set from the top.

BALDWIN: You heard Barbara say that as long as, you know, it's the commander-in-chief and it is a legal call or command, they have to follow it.

I want to ask you about the SolarWinds hack, which, you know, many believe could turn out to be the largest hack on the U.S. ever. We're learning Treasury systems were infiltrated, Energy Department infiltrated, Homeland Security, Commerce. Russia's being blamed, the president continues to downplay or ignore Russia's part. That's not news, that's just how he's been for years.

My question is on Biden, because you know, the president-elect will be inheriting all of this, and just to you, you know, as once-acting assistant secretary of Defense, you oversaw Russia policy. What would you like to see the president-elect do about Russia?

SLOTKIN: I just think we have to take decisive action. And this has always been hard, cyber-warfare is new. You know, it's not tank-on- tank or airplane-on-airplane, it's much more sort of hidden and in the shadows.

The problem is, we've got a situation where Russia and China as well just feel like they can attack and there'll be no consequences, so we have really have to build up that deterrence, and that means the Biden administration is going to have to be very clear from day one that it's going to be more than a press release condemning the Russians. There has to be consequences.

And I want to work with the Biden administration from Capitol Hill to figure out what those consequences are, whether we're talking about sanctions, whether they're going to boot out some of their officials who are here in the United States, whether we're going to build up our offensive cyber-capability.

But the idea that we could just keep getting attacked like this? This was an exquisite attack. And to not do anything about it is just -- it's not palatable and not possible for the next 10, 15 years.

BALDWIN: I was talking to former DNI James Clapper about this hack the other day, and he was saying to me, you know, Brooke, the silver lining of all of this is that it appears the hackers accessed just the non-classified data. But then he emphasized to me that that is still potentially a gold mine, still lots of information to glean from that. Just as former CIA, do you agree and what kind of information are we talking about?

SLOTKIN: Well, I've been receiving classified briefings through my role on the Homeland Security Committee and on the Armed Services Committee, we've gotten access to some of this. And I don't think we understand the full scope of this hack right now. I think every single day -- that's why you guys are reporting -- every day, there's something new about who was targeted and what back door was created. I think the experts are still trying to figure out what the extent of the damage was.

But with just unclassified information, it is -- it can be devastating, right? Private conversations that we have between our ambassadors, between Treasury officials, what our negotiating positions are, what our economic planning is? Like, those are the kinds of things that's -- you know, just sensitive if not classified. And it still gives our adversaries a real window into what we're trying to do, it's just -- puts us at a disadvantage that's not good for anybody.

BALDWIN: Mm-hmm. And then just finally, Congresswoman Slotkin, you know, you, your colleagues on both sides of the aisle, you know, you passed COVID relief for families in this country, which includes $600 checks for a number of families.

TEXT: COVID Relief Deal, $900 Billion Package Includes: Money for vaccine distribution and schools; Jobless benefits of extra $300 per week; Small biz loans to firms with 300 or fewer employees; New round of $600 checks per qualifying individual

BALDWIN: I know you're part of this Problem-Solving Caucus -- you know, emphasis on bipartisanship, 25 Dems, 25 Republicans, you know, some of your colleagues say that the 600 bucks isn't enough. How do you solve the problem of everyday Americans who are struggling, who need more?

SLOTKIN: Yes. I mean, listen, we've been -- we helped unstick negotiations that were literally stuck for six months, and this is a short-term deal. It takes us between now and April, it was built as a bridge to when we'll have a different president, but also hopefully a different situation with COVID, right? Hopefully the light will be there at the end of the tunnel by the time we get to April.

[14:25:20]

It's not everything that everyone wanted, that is the nature of compromise. And if we waited and let the perfect be the enemy of the good, we wouldn't have a deal before Christmas and we wouldn't have anything.

In addition to the $600 per person, it's $600 per child as well. And then a continuation on unemployment, people were about to run out of unemployment and an extra $300 per check. There's lots of other stuff in there, it's not perfect, there's plenty of things that didn't get in that I thought should have been in. But in divided government, you've got to ,like, compromise somewhere, it's not a dirty word when the mission is to help the American people.

BALDWIN: Appreciate that, people watching appreciate that. I know the president-elect has referred to this as a down payment, more to come. Congresswoman Slotkin, great to see you, thank you so much.

SLOTKIN: Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: Health officials around the world are growing more concerned about this new coronavirus variant. Experts in the U.K. now say that they are "highly confident" -- that's a direct quote -- that it is more contagious.

Plus, a food crisis at Christmas, truck drivers overseas left stranded at closed borders.

This is CNN's special live coverage.

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